The lawsuit was the first of the cases developed entirely under Ms. Khan, a legal scholar who rose to prominence after she wrote a critique of Amazon that went viral, to be filed in court. Looking to prevent more “vertical” deals, in which the two companies don’t compete directly, the F.T.C. also challenged Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard in December. Last month, the Department of Justice accused Google of abusing a monopoly over the technology that places ads on websites.What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.William E. Kovacic, a former F.T.C. chairman, said the sealed ruling in the Meta case would be more problematic for the agency if the judge panned the legal theories underpinning the challenge. But if Judge Davila saw the F.T.C.’s more novel approach as plausible — even if the agency’s factual assertions were weak in this case — “that’s a low-impact defeat” less likely to hurt its future efforts, Mr. Kovacic said.The case was heard in San Jose, Calif., in December. During the seven-day hearing, Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and its chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, testified. The F.T.C. argued that if Meta …
